Pragmatic funding decisions have marked the third and final round of awards in the Administration’s $10 billion High-Speed Rail Program. The awards, announced on May 9, confirmed what critics, including this column, have long maintained: the White House high-speed rail initiative, stripped of its high-blown rhetoric, is in fact a program of modest incremental improvements to existing Amtrak passenger rail services. As such, the initiative represents a small but useful step in restoring more reliable intercity passenger rail service— but it hardly deserves the hype and exaggerated claims that have been used to characterize it. Rather, it is a “victory for incrementalism,” in the words of Scott Thomasson, policy director of the Progressive Policy Institute.
View this complete post...Archive for the ‘Policy’ Category
Pragmatic Funding Decisions Mark the Final Round of Rail Grants
Thursday, May 12th, 2011$2 Billion High-Speed Rail Investment
Tuesday, May 10th, 2011The Department’s Federal Railroad Administration selected 15 states and Amtrak to receive $2.02 billion for 22 high-speed intercity passenger rail projects as part of a nationwide network that will connect 80 percent of Americans to high-speed rail in 25 years.
View this complete post...Access for Value: Financing Transportation Through Land Value Capture
Monday, May 9th, 2011
Accessibility is the ease of reaching valued destinations, such as jobs, shops, schools, entertainment, and recreation. As such, accessibility creates value. Capturing some of this value would allow state and local governments to invest in the operations, maintenance, and in some cases expansion of their transportation networks. Accessibility, as an outcome-oriented metric, can effectively assess transportation’s economic impact, and capturing the value of accessibility would help states and metropolitan areas develop sustainable transportation funding streams.
View this complete post...Skepticism Greets US DOT’s Draft Transportation Bill
Thursday, May 5th, 2011An undated 498-page draft of US DOT’s legislative proposal for surface transportation reauthorization, the “Transportation Opportunities Act,” has been making the rounds in Washington for the past week. Its publication, however, has been largely ignored by the transportation community. What would ordinarily be an eagerly awaited event and the source of much comment, has passed virtually unnoticed…Partly, it is because the DOT draft contains no surprises: it merely restates the proposals already revealed in the President’s FY 2012 Budget request. But more importantly, the draft has been ignored by Washington stakeholders and political observers because it has been judged to lack political savvy and realism.
View this complete post...America’s Marine Highway Report to Congress
Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION
MARITIME ADMINISTRATION
America’s Marine Highway offers a cost-effective means to improve the economic efficiency, environmental sustainability, public safety and security, and resiliency of our transportation system. It also employs ships and mariners, providing jobs in peacetime and human and capital resources to deploy in time of war or natural disaster. Demand for ships to operate on Marine Highway corridors will also provide new business at the nation’s commercial shipyards.
The Economic Impacts of High Speed Rail: Transforming the Midwest
Monday, May 2nd, 2011
MIDWEST HIGH SPEED RAIL ASSOCIATION
The goal of the study is to provide a candid and impartial assessment of a wide range of investments that will need to be made in railroads, commuter rail and transit to support a HSR hub in downtown Chicago and to help envision the types of land use and development potential that a well-designed, integrated high-speed system could produce for Chicago and its surrounding communities.
Building for the 21st Century: American support for sustainable communities
Monday, April 25th, 2011SMART GROWTH AMERICA
A recent poll by Smart Growth America has found that in the midst of a struggling U.S. economy, support for smart growth strategies remains high among Americans on both sides of the aisle…Americans living in all types of areas – in rural, suburban and urban areas alike – want more sustainable communities.
Rural Roads: Techniques for High-to-Low Speed Transitions
Friday, April 22nd, 2011
TRANSPORTATION RESEARCH BOARD
North America’s rural landscape is dotted with isolated settlements, villages, and small towns that are typically located on rural roads where the general speed limit is 55 to 60 mph (90 to 100 km/h). Motorists are expected to slow down as they pass through these settlement areas, reducing their operating speed to 30 or 40 mph (50 or 65 km/h) in sections of road known as transition zones…There is clearly a need for better and more information concerning rural high-to-low speed transitions. This synthesis report is a preliminary step in that direction.
League of American Bicyclists: RESCISSIONS AND RESTORATION
Thursday, April 21st, 2011
LEAGUE OF AMERICAN BICYCLISTS
Rescissions are essentially a book keeping measure when properly administered. It allows USDOT to recoup unspent funds. However, some state DOTs have turned into an opportunity to gut neglected bicycle and pedestrian funding sources in order to preserve favored programs.
Guest on The Infra Blog: Governor Dannel Malloy, Connecticut
Tuesday, April 19th, 2011
Governor Malloy was Stamford’s longest serving Mayor, serving for 14 years from 1995 to 2009. Under his leadership, Stamford underwent a drastic transformation and became one of the country’s top ten most livable cities, according to Forbes magazine…On November 2, 2010, Dannel P. Malloy was elected the 88th Governor of the State of Connecticut and the first governor to have been elected under the state’s clean elections program.
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